Student documents little-known piece of Delaware history

Senior Nicole Solinger

2:44 p.m., Feb. 25, 2004--According to UD senior Nicole Solinger, “Many Americans believe that when their ancestors came to this country in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the only place that their ship stopped was its destination, most likely being the well-known immigration station, Ellis Island, N.Y. However, not all immigrants went to Ellis Island, some went to Philadelphia or to Wilmington, but on their way, they stopped in Cape Henlopen, Del.”

That’s how Solinger begins “Delaware Breakwater Quarantine Station: The First Stop in a New World,” an article she published in the winter issue of the Newsletter of the Delaware Heritage Commission.

Her article details the history of a quarantine station used by more than 200,000 immigrants, the Delaware Breakwater Quarantine Hospital. It was one of a group of coastal hospitals and stations that made up the National Quarantine System, which inspected and cared for immigrants who may have carried contagious diseases such as tuberculosis, yellow fever, cholera, typhus, smallpox and bubonic plague.

An elementary special education major with a minor in history, Solinger worked on the article about two months for her Delaware history class after first learning about the quarantine station while working as a counselor for the Delaware Hands-On-Heritage Camp in 2002. She said she decided to research the topic when she realized that few Delawareans are familiar with this aspect of Delaware history.

“The research was one of the hardest things about this article,” Solinger said. “When I started, I looked on the Internet, and all I could find was one article about the Breakwater Station. That was when I asked the heritage commission for help. I spoke with the director, and she directed me to another person at the commission who told me that I should go to the Delaware Public Archives in Dover.”

Solinger said there she found information about the station in two rolls of microfilms from medical and building records, newspaper articles and government records, yet the feat was putting the pieces together.

Solinger’s article explains how the first buildings of Delaware Breakwater Quarantine Hospital were erected in 1884, under the supervision of the Marine Hospital Service’s primary acting surgeon, George W. Stoner. The buildings were located about one-half mile from the tip of Cape Henlopen and about two-and-a-half miles from Lewes.

The hospital opened Oct. 20, 1884, under the supervision of William P. Orr, the assistant acting surgeon. In May 1886, the quarantine facility was officially opened to ships, most of which carried immigrants from European, Cuban and Mediterranean ports to Philadelphia.

When ships reached the Delaware Breakwater Quarantine Hospital, en route up the Delaware River, they were ordered to anchor and a few hospital attendants and a surgeon would board the vessel and inspect its passengers for signs of diseases.

Those who were suspected of being contagious were removed from the ship and put in the hospital for the duration of their illness, while the other passengers remained onboard the ship for two to 12 weeks and were monitored to see if any of them developed the disease.

With the growth of the station came changes in inspection procedures. Instead of only admitting the passenger suspected of having an illness to the facility, all those who may have come in contact with the infected person also were admitted.

Even with the growth of the quarantine station, hardships occurred for those immigrants quarantined on the ships for weeks. Lack of facilities, small portions of food, malnutrition, poor drinking water and communication problems due to language barriers, all happened throughout the process.

World War 1 closed the Delaware Breakwater Quarantine Station from 1917-18, when the U.S. Navy used the facility as a naval base. With immigration rates dropping, the quarantine station was abandoned in 1926, and demolished, without a trace, 11 years later after the federal government officially abandoned the station.

“I was amazed at how fast a piece of history could be lost,” Solinger said.

Article by Tywanda Howie, AS ‘04

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